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Panel to consider case against Lance Armstrong

Lance Armstrong doesn't believe he should pay back his bonus money for winning the Tour de France. But an arbitration panel in Texas decided Wednesday that it would at least consider arguments about why he should.

Lance Armstrong doesn't believe he should pay back his bonus money for winning the Tour de France. But an arbitration panel in Texas decided Wednesday that it would at least consider arguments about why he should.

SCA Promotions, an insurance company in Dallas, sued Armstrong in February, seeking the repayment of $12 million in bonuses and fees paid to Armstrong for winning the Tour de France from 2002-04.

Armstrong's attorney, Tim Herman, and the company's president, Bob Hamman, confirmed the arbitration panel's decision to USA TODAY Sports. A hearing has yet to be scheduled.

Herman had argued SCA Promotions was not allowed to sue Armstrong under terms of a settlement the disgraced cyclist reached with the company in 2006. That settlement said the case could not be reopened. But SCA Promotions felt differently after Armstrong finally confessed in January that he used banned drugs and blood transfusions to give himself in edge during all seven of his victories in the Tour de France from 1999-2005.

The history between the parties goes back more than a decade. Armstrong sued SCA Promotions in 2004 after the company withheld his bonus because it suspected him of fraud and cheating to win the Tour. In that case, Armstrong famously lied under oath in 2005 when he said he never doped. Without further proof back then, SCA agreed to settle the case by giving Armstrong $7.5 million -- an award that "no party may challenge, appeal or attempt to set aside," according to the terms.Herman said the panel still could agree to throw out the case based on those settlement terms.

He said the decision on Wednesday was mainly a matter of jurisdiction –- whether the case would go to district court, where SCA filed suit, or the arbitration panel, where the previous case was settled. The panel decided it had jurisdiction.

In a separate lawsuit, another insurance company, Acceptance Insurance, also is seeking repayment of $3 million in bonuses paid to Armstrong for winning the Tour in 1999, 2000 and 2001. The suits over Tour bonuses are among four pending against Armstrong, all filed since his confession to TV host Oprah Winfrey.